The Arts in Turkey Flourish, but Warily
土耳其藝術活力旺，自由不足
By Rachel Donadio

ISTANBUL – At a glittering dinner on an island in the Bosporus here recently, Ali Gureli, the chairman of Contemporary Istanbul, the city’s annual art fair, told hundreds of international collectors, gallery owners and artists that Istanbul had secured its place as a global art capital.
最近在博斯普魯斯海峽一個島上的盛宴中，伊斯坦堡市年度藝術博覽會「當代伊斯坦堡」主席古瑞里，對數百名國際收藏家、藝廊老闆和藝術家說，該市已是個全球藝術之都。

This metropolis, pulsing with energy, money and self-confidence, seems to prove him right. Galleries abound. The Istanbul Design Biennial is in full swing. Three new private art museums are in the works. The rock and jazz scenes are thriving.
這個大都會在能源、金錢和自信的鼓動下，似乎證明此言不虛。畫廊林立，設計雙年展如日中天。三座私人藝術館在興建。搖滾及爵士音樂會越來越多。

But beneath the surface, a different picture emerges. Artists say they are increasingly subject to state pressure or intervention, or withdrawal of funding by the government, which is led by the party founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose no-holds-barred capitalism has helped fuel the creative boom but whose conservative Muslim sensibility has shifted the national tone after decades in which a secular elite ran the country.
表象之下卻浮現另一實景。藝術家表示日益承受國家的壓力、干預或政府撤銷資助，土耳其政府現由總統厄多岡所創政黨領導，該黨主張不設限的資本主義，激發了當前的創意熱潮，但該黨保守的穆斯林屬性已使土耳其在歷經世俗派精英數十年治理之後，基調丕變。

After the June 2013 protests in Gezi Park revealed the depth of public anger at the government’s increasingly top-down exercise of power, cultural figures describe a climate of anxiety and self-censorship because the government’s standards for what it considers offensive keep shifting.
2013年6月伊斯坦堡蓋齊公園示威事件，透露了民眾對政府日益高壓施政怨怒之深，文化界人士說，政府容忍的底線不斷改變，以致焦慮及自我審查氣氛瀰漫。

“There are these invisible boundaries,” said the artist Iz Oztat, 33, who was asked to remove a mention of the Armenian genocide of 1915 in a booklet she wrote for an exhibition in Madrid last year that received Turkish government funding. “You don’t know they’re there until you cross them.”
33歲的藝術家伊絲．歐茲塔特說：「有許多看不見的界線，直到越了界，才知道它在那兒。」去年她為馬德里一項接受土國官方贊助的展覽寫了本小冊子，當局要求她刪去提及1915年亞美尼亞種族大屠殺的文句。

Omer Celik, the minister of culture and tourism has downplayed concerns. “On the contrary, there is censorship within the established circles of culture and arts,” he said recently.
土國文化觀光部長塞利克淡化藝術家的關切。他最近說：「相反的，既有藝文圈內會自我審查。」

Today, officials at state theaters say that they must now send plot synopses for government approval, and that gay characters rarely appear onstage. Hemlines have been lowered on ballet costumes.
國營劇場的官員說，如今演出內容概要必須送審，舞台上鮮少出現同性戀角色，芭蕾舞裙也已放長。

Public-school teachers have been investigated for teaching books by John Steinbeck and Amin Maalouf.
在公立學校教作家史坦貝克及馬洛夫作品的教師也受到調查。

“The governing party has introduced a climate in Turkey in which the pious person is a more acceptable citizen,” said Baris Uluocak, the director of an Istanbul branch of a teachers’ union.
土國教師工會伊斯坦堡分會主席烏盧奧賈克說：「執政黨為土耳其帶來一股風氣：信仰虔誠的公民更受人認同。」

The novelist Elif Shafak was tried in 2006 and later acquitted of criminal charges of “insulting Turkishness” for a novel, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” that explored the killings of Ottoman Armenians by Turks in 1915, which Turkey does not recognize as genocide. “Every writer, journalist or poet in Turkey knows deep within that words can get you in trouble,” Ms. Shafak said. The Turkish Nobel laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk has also been tried and acquitted on the same charges.
女作家艾莉芙．夏法克在2006年因所著小說《伊斯坦堡的私生女》而依「有辱國格」刑事罪名受審，後無罪開釋，書中探討1915年許多鄂圖曼帝國的亞美尼亞人被土耳其殺害一事，而土國至今不承認那是種族大屠殺。夏法克說：「土耳其每個作家、新聞工作者及詩人都心知肚明，文字足以賈禍。」曾獲諾貝爾文學獎的土耳其小說家帕慕克也曾因同樣罪名受審並獲判無罪。

“This was always the case in Turkey but it has become worse,” Ms. Shafak added. “Critical thought is clearly unwelcome. Media diversity and media freedom have visibly shrunk. As a result, there is a lot of self-censorship.”
夏法克還說：「土耳其一向如此，不過於今尤烈。批判式思考顯然不受歡迎。媒體多元化及媒體自由明顯限縮。於是出現許多自我審查。」

Last year, the government proposed a new law that would create an 11-person council appointed directly by the cabinet to fund the arts, project by project. Now, the government allocates money to cultural institutions that are free to use it as they wish.
土國政府去年提案制訂新法，設置由內閣直接任命的11人委員會，逐案審查藝術贊助經費。目前政府是把藝術經費撥給各文化機構自由使用。

Since coming to national power in 2002, Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has cast itself as the defender of observant Muslims and Turkey’s rural heartland and has recently been depicting state-sponsored theater, ballet and opera as vestiges of the secular past. In a speech in 2012, he criticized the secular elites for their previous hold on culture.
厄多岡所屬正義及發展黨2002年在中央執政以來，一向以恪守清規的穆斯林及土國鄉村重鎮的捍衛者自居，最近則把國營劇場、芭蕾舞和歌劇指為該國世俗派歷史的遺跡。厄多岡2012年演說時曾批評世俗派菁英過去把持該國文化。

“With privatization, go ahead and stage your theater as you desire,” he said. “If funding is needed, we, as the government, will sponsor and support the plays we want.”
他說：「在私有化的情況下，你的劇場要演什麼戲悉聽尊便。如果需要經費贊助，我們政府方面只贊助及支持我們想支持的戲。」

Last year, the government sold two leading theaters in Ankara, which together drew audiences of more than half a million people a year, to a private business group. “In theater, you can always be subject to pressure and censorship, but you find a way to get around it,” said Lemi Bilgin, 58, who was ousted as director of state theaters in 2013. “But if you rip apart the institutions and take away the venues for the artist to perform, it leaves you no room to struggle, and that is the most dangerous form of oppression.”
土國政府去年把安卡拉的兩座每年共吸引50多萬觀眾的主要劇場賣給民間商業集團。現年58歲、去年失去國營劇場主任職位的比爾金說：「國營劇場始終面臨政府的壓力和審查，但總能找到逃避的辦法。然而如果把這些機構賣掉，讓藝術家失去表演的場地，就失去了奮鬥的空間，那是最危險的壓制形式。」

The Gezi Park demonstrations emboldened young people. Ethnic minorities have been acknowledged, if not entirely empowered. In 2008, the Turkish state broadcaster added a Kurdish TV channel and Kurdish radio station, as well as those for Arabic and other regional languages.
蓋齊公園的示威讓年輕人壯了膽。少數族裔即使未被完全賦能，至少也獲得了承認。2008年，土耳其國營廣播公司增設了一個庫德語電視頻道、一家庫德語電台，以及幾個使用阿拉伯語和其他區域語言的頻道和電台。

“It’s easier to talk about the past now,” said the novelist Kaya Genc, “but it’s still problematic to talk about the present.”
小說家根奇說：「現在，討論過去比較容易了，但討論當下還有問題。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/arts/in-turkey-the-arts-flourish-but-warily-.html

2014-12-02聯合報/G5版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 馮克芸譯 原文參見紐時週報十二版上